


Box of Rain

by bellatemple



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Drama, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-22
Updated: 2011-12-22
Packaged: 2017-10-27 18:48:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/298896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellatemple/pseuds/bellatemple
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's April, 2001, and all Sam wants is to get away. In St. Petersburg, Florida, he might just have found his chance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Box of Rain

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [](http://50states-spn.livejournal.com/profile)[**50states_spn**](http://50states-spn.livejournal.com/), state of Florida, with many thanks to [](http://butterflykiki.livejournal.com/profile)[**butterflykiki**](http://butterflykiki.livejournal.com/) for ever patiently dealing with me quoting fic pieces at her and flailing and ranting and muttering along the way. I consider this work to be somewhat of a companion piece to "John of the Cabin". You'll likely notice several shared themes and motifs throughout.

  
_What do you want me to do, to do for you to see you through?  
this is all a dream we dreamed one afternoon long ago_   


In the dark they run ragged, wild creatures foraging off the land, and though he outgrew playing pretend more than ten years ago, Sam has to hold back a wild rumpus _WHOOP_ as they jump bushes and fences, dodge sprinklers and sleeping security guards.

Dean pauses, straddling the top of the last fence, and grins down at Sam, looking about ten years younger himself. He looks back across the flower beds and open fields to the low, sprawling shapes of the dormitories framed by palm fronds. "We're so coming back tomorrow," he says, and Sam, who's been thinking the same thing, startles.

"What?" he asks, and narrows his eyes at this brother. "Why?"

Dean looks at him like he's gone soft in the head, and just like that, the fragile partnership, the feral camraderie that chased them across the campus, vanishes. Sam's back to just being Dean's geeky little brother.

"Dude," Dean says. "Friday night, college dorm. We're going to get trashed for free."

There are days when Sam wonders if Dean's not actually still eleven, deep down inside.

*

They've got a house this time rather than just a motel room, an unfurnished one story affair with two bedrooms on the other side of the interstate from the college. It's not bad -- more room to stretch out in than the Impala and cheaper than a motel room -- though both the fridge and the air conditioning are busted. They have a yard and a driveway, which is nice, since they're not actually off the main drag, and Floridian drivers are terrible. Having to have a minimum speed limit posted on the interstate is never a good sign.

The first day, before the raid on the college, Sam spends his time trying to clear the palmetto bugs -- cockroaches, really, only huge and with a laid back, tropical attitude -- from the back room. Someone had left a nearly full can of Raid under the bathroom sink, and Sam soon discovers why, as he's chased out into the yard by giant, pissed off, flying balls of insecticide.

When Dean gets home, Sam hands him his bedroll with a smile. "I've decided you should get the big bedroom," he says. "Since you're the oldest."

*

The raid, spent grabbing anything they can find not bolted down or locked up, nets them six new shirts a piece, a half-empty bottle of Tide, an anemic desk fan, and three foosballs. Sam spots something pink and satiny in Dean's pile, but it disappears into Dean's duffel before he can investigate and, frankly, anything that gets that close to Dean's socks Sam doesn't want to know about. Not when that Tide is the first detergent they've seen in four states.

The raid is also the first time Sam's set foot on a college campus without a hunt looming over his head, and it feels almost like coming home. He wants to plop down on the stained, spot-burned couch outside the the dorm labeled "Dante" and let the general air of knowledge and possibility seep into his skin. But Dean has an armful of shirts, guardianship authority over Sam for another month, and no patience for anything scholastic, so Sam settles for his game, for imagining he and Dean are students pulling a prank, drunk and carefree instead of just poor.

The buzz lasts all the way back to the Impala, waiting silently in the shadow of a grimy highway overpass.

*

Dean spends his days working under the table for a boat mechanic at the small marina by the highway. Sam usually meets up with him for lunch at the Publix, then spends the rest of his day on campus, slipping into the back of any class large enough for him not to be noticed. The school is tiny, not even two thousand students, and the larger classes all turn out to be marine biology lectures, which sometimes run a little too close to cryptozoology lessons for Sam's tastes -- this is the creature, this is where it lives, this is how it eats -- but he feels starved for knowledge that doesn't come straight out of a book, and he takes what he can get.

He should only be weeks from graduating high school, but Dean says they're not staying long enough to register here. He's heard it before: Dad says "days" and it drags on for a month, and by the time they head north again, it'll be too late. Dad and Dean are sabotaging Stanford without ever even knowing Sam's been accepted, and Sam can't do a damn thing about it. He's not going to risk their wrath without an escape route. So he sits in on classes and pretends he's already there. At night, he lies on his bed roll by the pilfered fan, stripped to his boxers and still sweating buckets, and plans his other ways out.

*

Sam's favorite spots on campus are all along the sea wall. There's a little beach just next to the palm hammock that vanishes in high tides, where the smokers like to hang out around sunset. There's the little land-bridge pier that juts out near where the creek runs into the bay, where no one hangs out but him. It's too near the waterfront facility, home to the school's very own search-and-rescue team, for Sam to really feel it's his own, but he's used to that. Nothing in his life has ever really been his.

The first week he's there, he ends following a group of students heading to the waterfront on a field trip. His total lack of proper paperwork keeps him from being able to sign out a canoe or kayak with them, but he spends several minutes hanging out by the gate anyway, watching them talk and laugh with each other as they divide themselves up into pairs and strap on life jackets. He can't help but wonder if Dean and Dad have ever had this, have ever just fooled around with friends, not worrying about ghosts or werewolves or when to scam their next credit card.

Dad must have, Sam knows. He's not so sure about Dean.

*

Dean likes to head to the campus on Friday and Saturday nights, and he always insists that Sam come along. Dean goes straight for one of the larger, circular dorms to get trashed on Everclear and Kool-Aid. Rumor has it that one of the suites has a stripper pole, though Sam's never seen it, and being a blowhard is one of the few things that Dean and college students in general have in common.

Sam prefers the dorms on the other side of campus, the ones where the international students gather to play cricket after classes and there aren't quite so many giant murals of Bob Marley on the walls. Here, the students are more likely to spend their weekend evenings watching movies and having conversations, and while alcohol is just as likely to get involved in there, somewhere, it's much less likely to get spilled down Sam's shirt.

One night he finds a group hanging out in a circle by the same burned couch he'd lounged on in the raid. There's maybe five of them, each with a drink in hand, two of them with cigarettes. Sam hovers by the stairs, debating the best way to make his way in. He hasn't met any of these kids yet, though he recognizes most of them. They're down at the waterfront a lot, part of the search and rescue team that assists the coast guard. It's a little bit weird, seeing them without their blue overalls.

One of them looks up and spots him. She's a dark-skinned woman, with short hair and a broad smile who talks with a trace of an accent Sam can't place. Polynesian, perhaps, or Caribbean. She inclines her head at him. "Hey Lonely Boy," she calls. "You going to stay in the shadows forever?"

Sam hunches his shoulders even as he smiles back and shuffles forward. "Hey," he says. "I didn't want to intrude."

The woman rolls her eyes. "Please," she says, then scoots over on the couch a bit and gestures to the arm. "Slap that ass down already. Eric was just going to tell us about his ghost stories."

Sam manages not to wince, but his smile becomes a bit more fixed. "Oh yeah?" He looks around, trying to guess which of the two guys is Eric. He'd put money on the strawberry blond with the goatee. "This place haunted?"

"I've heard Omega is." This comes from the heavy set white woman sitting cross-legged on the ground. She leans back on her hands and puffs a lank strand of hair out of her face. Omega, Sam knows, is one of the newest dorm buildings, over on the other side of campus. "A couple people have said they've seen things."

"They used this land as a military hospital during the war," Maybe-Eric says excitedly. Sam's pretty sure that's not true, though there's a historic fort not far away. He thinks the campus is probably built on fill land, and might not have even existed in the forties.

The idea relaxes him. It's nice, he decides, to get to listen to ghost stories like they're fanciful tales, instead of things he needs to hunt and kill.

*

"Hey." Dean's voice cuts into the group, just in the middle of a tale of students from the sixties racing the British Royal Navy, and Sam sighs. Dean stands swaying in the glow of dorm's exterior lights, grinning like an idiot. "Hey, Sam."

He's trashed. Sam feels his mouth screw up as he tries not to shrink back on the couch. Maybe-Eric -- who is, in fact, actually Eric -- and the others are looking between Dean and Sam like they're the latest in home entertainment.

"‘Scuse me," Sam mutters, and he shoves to his feet and rushes over to Dean, hands out to push his brother back. Dean shuffles along easy enough, still grinning.

"Sam, dude, you gotta -- you're at the wrong dorm, man." He gets his hand on Sam's shoulder and steadies. "Dude, you've _gotta_ come with me. They've got this game. You'll love it."

"Dean," Sam says, glancing back. Eric and friends just look amused. "That's great, but I'm --"

"They get down in the -- in the center of the thing, right?" Dean waves his free hand in a circle. "The thing. And they've got one of those big ass balls." He lets go of Sam's shoulder to hold his arms out like he's hugging an exercise ball. "And -- no, two. Two balls. Two guys. They each got one, and they _run at each other_ \--" Dean snorts, laughing to himself, then claps his hands sharply. "The one who goes flyin' loses. We gotta try it."

"Has Pat shown up wearing the penis costume yet?" Joni, the Caribbean woman, asks. "It's not a party till there's a guy in a penis costume."

Dean points at her, his grin transforming into more of a leer. "Truth," he says.

"You are such a jackass," Sam tells him. He's pretty sure he's not going to be able to show his face on campus again.

Dean just smirks and smacks Sam in the chest.

*

They haven't seen Dad in two weeks when the cellphone rings in the middle of the night. Dean picks up after only the first few beeps, but speaks too quietly for Sam to make out what he's saying. The possibilities flood into his mind -- it's Pastor Jim, Dad's dead, they're orphans -- and he thinks cruelly that if Dad's really gone, he can finally live the life he wants. He shuts it down as soon as he thinks it. He doesn't want his father dead, he just wants him to let him go.

Dean's booted foot hits Sam's bare one only a few minutes later, and Sam's shirt flies out of the stuffy dark to land on his face. Sam dreads what's going to come out of his brother's mouth.

"Get dressed," Dean says, and Sam curses inwardly. "We've got a job."

*

The Sunshine Skyway Bridge is only three miles from the house, but Dean takes his time on the way over, stopping for gas, then again for change for the toll. He drums his fingers on the steering wheel in a familiar cadence as he drives. He's nervous, Sam thinks. So eager to be Dad's good soldier that he can't even relax when Dad's not there to criticise.

"So?" Sam asks, tired of the incessant tapping and wishing he could be back on his bedroll in the little house, or even better, in Blue Earth or Sioux Falls, where the air itself doesn't feel like it's doing its best to smother him.

"So?" Dean mimics. He's maybe even grouchier than Sam is.

"So where are we meeting Dad?"

Dean's lips tighten. His jaw twitches. "We're not."

Sam stares. "Dude," he says. "No way did Dad send us on a hunt _by ourselves._ "

"Dude," Dean shoots back. "I'm twenty-two. And anyway, we're not hunting tonight. Just . . . seeing if there's something here worth Dad checking out."

"Oh, right," Sam says, and even he can tell he's overdoing the sarcasm. "That's so much better."

*

In the relatively cool pre-dawn hours, the Skyway Bridge is shrouded in fog, only the two towers and the swoop of the main cable visible above the bank. Dean pays the toll with a salute and an awkward smile for the toll collector, then pulls slowly away. There's no one else in the southbound lanes at this hour. Sam figures they have maybe half an hour before they start seeing the first trickles of the morning rush.

"This is her favorite kind of night," Dean says, leaning forward over the wheel to peer through the thick blanket of white and gray. Sam can barely see the road in front of him, only knows they're still on the highway by the orange glow of the street lights.

"Her?" he asks.

"The phantom hitchhiker. I hear she wears white." Dean's grin is more a show of teeth than a sign of any actual mirth, Sam thinks. "Hope you're not two-timing anyone."

Sam thinks of the girls he's met on campus. He thinks about how he can't bring himself to really get to know any of them, because he knows he could leave at any time, without warning.

"Shut up, Dean."

*

She resolves out of the thinning fog just as they pass the first of the support cables. She looks young, somewhere between Dean and Sam's ages, and her blond hair has faded to nearly the same shade as her short white sundress. That's pretty common around here, Sam's noticed. All but the very brightest of colors get bleached out in the sun. He wonders if her hair was that pale when she was alive, or if she's been hanging out somewhere bright.

Dean pulls over onto the nonexistent shoulder and flicks on the hazards. "There she is," he says, and though it's about the dumbest thing he could possibly say when the spirit is hovering _right in front of the car_ , Sam doesn't call him on it. He leans into the window instead, trying to get a better look at her even as she turns towards the Impala, her posture slumped and imploring. Her eyes are dark and deep-set, her face incredibly pale, and Sam wonders how anyone driving along this bridge could mistake her for a living woman.

Then she locks eyes with Sam, and he knows.

*

The loneliness clubs Sam in the chest, so solid that for a moment he's convinced the car's been hit. The spirit is so staggeringly alone, Sam's heart and lungs ache in empathy. They're both so far from what they want. Alienated and pushed aside. No one sees them. They could slip right through the cracks and no one would care.

The spirit's eyes are hazel, Sam thinks, not black. Why did he think that they were black? She lifts her hand, reaching for Sam as her mouth falls open, and the pain in his chest somehow deepens.

Dad and Dean are using him. They don't want him, they want a tool, something to prop them up while they play at being heroes. He's no better than a shovel to them, or a shotgun, a regular human Swiss army hunting knife. They'll ruin him to get what they want. His hand comes up before he even thinks to move it, closing on the door handle.

He wants an escape route. That's all he's been able to think about, lately. But Dad and Dean are closing doors as fast as Sam can open them, and now Sam can't even have Stanford.

There's only one way out. Sam knows it. And the spirit in front of him does, too.

*

"Hey, lady!" The sound of Dean's voice snaps Sam back to the present. He's climbed almost halfway out of the car, only a foot away from the nearly 200 foot drop to the bay below. Dean's out of the car now, he's circled the hood, his weapon drawn and aimed at the spirit's central mass. "I got your ride right here!"

The spirit snaps her gaze from Sam to Dean, and Sam feels a frisson rush through him as their eyes meet. The spirit drew out all of his worst thoughts, magnifying them until Sam nearly drowned in them.

If she found all of that in Sam, what might she find in Dean?

Sam shoves his door as far open as he can, barely noticing when the door hits the guardrail with a nasty scraping sound. As he makes it to his feet, he manages to catch Dean's eye through the spirit's torso, and he feels like he's been his in the chest all over again.

Dean looked absolutely destroyed. And now he's staring at Sam like he's the one responsible.

The spirit rushes Dean without warning, her hair and hemline streaming out behind her like tails of a kite. Before Sam can do more than stretch out his hand, she's pushed Dean back and over the rail. Sam only has to turn his body to look over the side and when he does, he catches just a glimpse of Dean's terrified face before he vanishes into the fog blanketing the bay.

*

Sam sucks a breath in through his teeth, then does it again. And again.

He's hyperventilating. He knows he is, and he knows he needs to stop it, stop it _right now_ , but all he can see is Dean's face before the spirit threw him off the bridge, the horror in his eyes. It's imprinted on Sam's vision like an afterimage, and no matter where Sam looks, he can't shake it. He clutches at the jersey wall, overcome by the sensation that it's going to melt out from underneath him if he doesn't hold on tight enough, that the whole bridge will vanish in a swirl of sparks like a spirit hit with salt.

Part of him thinks that'd be good. Then maybe he'd be able to find Dean and _explain_.

"Hey!"

The world suddenly goes white, and Sam looks up, realizing he's almost doubled over the jersey wall. He tries to straighten, still sucking in air, and ends up sliding down in the narrow space between the Impala and the wall. The light and the voice follow him, and Sam realizes it's a cop.

"Hey," she says, more gently this time, approaching with care. Sam can't make out much more than her silhouette in the darkness. "Hey kid, you can't stop here." She shines the flashlight at his face and curses. Sam can guess what he looks like, but finds he doesn't care. He just curls tighter into his ball between the car and the jersey wall.

*

There's a war going on in Sam's head as the cop comes closer. Two narratives fight for dominance, one insisting that cops are good guys, that cops can help, the other telling tales of child services, of corruption, while Sam just fights to remember to breathe.

"Hey," she says, close enough now that he can see her face but not close enough to touch. "Are you alright? Do you need me to call someone?"

Sam swallows, looking at her through the edge of his hair. His vision blurs around the edges, and he realizes he's been crying. "My brother --" he manages, then stops, because he's not sure Dean would thank him for talking to the police.

"Shit," she says. She straightens and shines her flashlight off the edge of the bridge, down into the fog. Sam chokes.

"You won't --" He cuts off when she turns back, lifts his hand to block the flashlight from his eyes. "There's nothing --"

She has her radio out and to her mouth in moments, calling it in. A jumper on the Skyway, requesting back up, EMTs, search and rescue to the center span.

Sam tucks his head between his knees. He can't breathe.

*

The EMTs wrap a blanket over Sam's shoulders. They want to call Dad, but Sam just keeps shaking his head. His father is the last person he wants to see right now. He pulls himself together enough to use his fake ID when they ask. Times like these, he thinks, he needs to be an adult.

He doesn't mention the spirit. They don't need to know that part. They just need to find Dean.

They tow the Impala. Sam knows he's in no shape to drive her, but watching her get loaded onto the back of the truck still makes something in his chest seize up. Dean will kill him if they scratch her paint.

It's the first cop -- Hughes, her uniform says, but she says to call her Gloria -- who tells it to him straight. Sam's not an idiot, he knows the odds of surviving that kind of fall are slim to none. She doesn't contradict him when he describes Dean in the present tense, but she won't let him stay and wait.

"It's going to take awhile," she says. "They'll find him, but these things take time. Sometimes days."

Sam can't wait days. He lets Gloria and her partner drive him home, back to the tiny house on the wrong side of the highway.

"Are you sure we can't call someone for you?"

Sam shakes his head.

There's no one left.

*

Sam doesn't sit around for long. He grabs his phone, a can of salt, and the extra knife Dean keeps in his bedroll. He checks the phone, but if Dad's going to call, it'll be Dean's, which is either in the Impala or in the bay, by now. He throws his meager supplies into his backpack -- the rest is all in the Impala, and he's kicking himself for letting them tow her, now -- and gives the house one more once-over.

There's nothing here. There never is. These places aren't really home.

He sets out on foot, headed for the campus. The sun's fully risen now, and the highway is packed with traffic, at least a five mile back up from the rescue and recovery crews still at the bridge. He wonders how often this happens, what sort of hells the drivers are wishing on Dean right now for making them late to work.

*

Joni's out on the couch in front of her dorm, an apple in one hand, a cigarette in the other. She's wearing only a black tank top and cut-off shorts, her bare feet tucked up under her knees, a textbook in her lap -- a sharp contrast to Sam's layers and his bag of hunting gear.

The campus is quiet. The early classes are already in session; the rest of the students are mostly still in bed. She looks up as he approaches.

"Still up," she says, and Sam's not sure if she's asking about him or talking about herself. "Exams are a bitch."

Sam shrugs, his hands shoved into his pockets to disguise the way they're clenching. What he wouldn't give to have exams be his only worry, right now. "Is Eric around?"

She shakes her head. "He's on call. They left a couple hours ago, some incident on the bridge."

 _Some incident._ Sam sucks a breath through his teeth.

"What do you know about the Skyway hitchhiker?"

Joni frowns, flips her book closed. "Hey," she says. "You're not okay, are you?"

"No," Sam says. It occurs to him that it's the first truly honest thing he's said to anyone on this campus. "I need you to help me steal a boat."

*

She says no. She says of course not, and not a chance in hell. Then she offers him tea, and Sam's stressed and freaking out enough that he takes her up on it.

She sits him down on the Goodwill loveseat in her dorm room and heats a cup of water in the microwave, stirring in some honey before adding the teabag and handing over the mug. She pulls over her desk chair, sits down on it sideways, and leans her elbows on her knees.

"Okay," she says. "What happened?"

"Your roommate --"

"-- is dating a senior with a single. Spill it."

And Sam does.

He tells her he's seventeen. That he's not really a student, that he and Dean live across the highway in a tiny house with no furniture. That he sneaks onto the campus because he can't go to school. He tells her they went down to the bridge, but he doesn't say why. It's the only thing he holds back on: the hunting and the ghosts. Years of learning to keep his mouth shut keep him from getting those words out, but he refuses to lie to her any more. So he doesn't say why they were at the bridge. Just that they were there -- and then Dean wasn't.

"God," she breathes, and she rocks back in her seat, her fingers tight on her knees. "Jesus, Sam, he --"

Sam shakes his head hard. He hasn't taken a single sip of the tea, and the heat from the cup no longer burns his hands. "He didn't jump," he says. "He wouldn't do that to me."

She nods, but Sam knows she doesn't believe him.

That's alright. She's never met Dean. Not the real Dean. As long as she doesn't say it out loud, Sam's willing to let her believe what she likes.

"That's terrible," she says. "I'm so sorry, Sam."

Sam drinks some tea. It's awful, luke-warm and too sweet, and Dean's voice rings in the back of his head, taunting him for not demanding coffee. "Will you help me?" he asks.

"We're not stealing a boat," she says.

"Fine." Sam gets up to leave, and she wraps her hand around his wrist. She's surprisingly strong.

"You won't leave it to the professionals?" She stares him down. Sam stares right back. "I know a guy," she says finally. "We'll _borrow_ a boat."

*

Sam's never been further down the road than the campus. There's a toll to get across the causeways to the Gulf, and Dean will never pay any tolls if he can help it. Sam's thought of going, sometimes, hitching a ride with one of the students, or just seeing if he can make it to the beaches on foot, just to see what's there.

It turns out the answer is opulence, and not much else.

The whole drive to St. Pete Beach is lined with tiny upscale communities and boutique seafood restaurants. This side of the city is reserved for the rich and the tourists, and Sam doesn't qualify as either. He wonders if Joni ever feels out of place in her beat up little Geo, but the tension in her frame as they drive is pretty clearly directed right at him.

Maybe he shouldn't have told her everything. In retrospect, he can see where learning the guy you'd invited into your room has been breaking on to what you thought was a secure campus is pretty creepy.

"Your friend," Sam starts, then has to pause and blink when they crest the next bridge and the Don Cesar looms into view. "Goddamn," he breathes. "It's a giant pink Spanish mission."

Joni simply hums, shooting him sidelong glances. Sam shakes himself, then tries again.

"Your friend. He has a boat?"

"Yes."

"And he'll take us out to the bridge."

"No promises."

Sam considers that. He looks down at his bag in the seat well, then back up at Joni. "Does he own a gun?"

"I swear to god, I will throw you out of this car."

Sam looks down again. "Right."

*

Joni's friend is Captain Barry, a slim, lobster of a man with a thatch of salt and pepper beard on his chin and dark black eyebrows -- and no other hair to speak of. He stands on the deck of his small sailboat at the Treasure Island Marina, stance wide, his hands on his hips, while Joni explains the situation. Sam can practically see the imaginary pipe clenched in the man's teeth.

"Skyway, huh?" he asks. "I've been hearing rumors all morning."

"He didn't jump," Sam says. Captain Barry nods, and unlike Joni, Sam thinks he might actually believe it.

"Foggy night, right?"

"Yeah."

Another nod, and Barry hops down off the boat, offering Sam his hand. "We can't go until tonight," he says. "They don't find anything before nightfall, we'll go see the Gray Lady."

"The New York Times?" Joni asks. Barry just laughs.

*

Barry likes to call Sam "matey". Sam puts up with it because he's his only lead on information on the hitchhiker.

"They've been seeing her for decades," he says. "Up at the center of the southbound span. She even predates the Summit Venture."

Sam looks at Joni, but she only shrugs. She's not the historian of her little group.

"Summit Venture," Barry says again. "She was a carrier that hit the Skyway back in the early eighties. The bridge was totalled, collapsed on the spot, sending a handful of cars and a whole damn bus into the drink."

Joni sucks air through her teeth. Sam just wishes he could be surprised.

"Fucking tragedy," Barry says. "They never rebuilt the old bridge. You can still see the approaches. They turned them into fishing piers."

"But she's from before that?" Sam asks.

"Yep. I got a friend who used to work the toll booths down that way. That girl's been hitching the southbound since the early days. Says she took to the new bridge like it was built just for her."

Sam's shoulders slump. "So you don't know who she is."

Barry shrugs. "Some jumper. That bridge always did bring that out in people."

 _And now,_ Sam thinks, _so does she._

"Who's the Gray Lady?" he asks. Barry shakes his head.

"That one's even harder. People see the hitchhiker all the time up there on that bridge, but the only ones that see the Lady are folks like me, the ones who see the bridge from the underside. Some think she and the hitcher are one and the same, but I've seen them both." He catches Sam's eye and inclines his head. "I know the difference."

"I'm lost," Joni says. "You guys are talking about _ghosts_ , right?"

"You'll have to forgive Joni," Barry says. "She's had her imagination surgically removed."

*

The bridge looks completely different from this angle, longer and leaner and not as sharply pitched. As Barry steers the boat into a leisurely approach, Sam thinks that from here, it doesn't seem so crazy to think that Dean survived.

Distances on the water can play tricks on you, though, and as they start to actually get close, Sam's heart sinks. The thing is _tall_ , with a clearance of nearly 200 feet, and more than four miles across. It's been eighteen hours since Dean went over the side.

The odds aren't in his favor.

Sam shakes himself. If he starts thinking that way, then Dean really will be screwed. And so will Sam. He can't go and do his own thing unless he knows that Dean and Dad are out there, doing theirs.

This isn't how their story's supposed to go.

Barry cuts the engine as they get close and calls out instructions to Joni that, as far as Sam's concerned, might as well be gibberish. She follows his directions, then looks back. "Are we allowed to even be here?" she calls.

Barry grins and gives her a thumbs up -- which isn't actually a "yes", Sam notes.

"Fog's thinner tonight," Barry notes. He's looking up now as the current carries them closer to the bridge at a crawl. "Still, she should be around here, somewhere."

"And she'll help?" Sam's never thought of spirits as being particularly _helpful_ beings, but he's also never been entirely convinced by Dad's "it's not natural, it doesn't belong here" argument. And frankly, he's willing to try just about anything.

Barry grins and gives Sam a thumbs up.

*

After two hours of drifting and adjusting their position and drifting some more, Sam's starting to lose hope. Barry and his Gray Lady are his only leads, and it's pretty clear to Sam that Barry's at least half out of his head on _something_. Sunset hasn't cooled the air by much, and the humidity makes it feel heavy in Sam's lungs.

Every hour that Dean's missing, Sam loses just a little bit more hope. He's just starting to plan what he'll do if he can't find Dean -- at the moment, it involves talking Barry and Joni into helping him run away to Cuba -- when Joni lets out something between a gasp and a shriek. Sam looks over to see her pointing up into the fog under the central span of the bridge, and he feels the breath rush out of his own lungs.

He can see where people might get the hitchhiker and the Gray Lady confused. They both prefer the same stretch of bridge, both have long hair and flowing skirts, and both resolve out of the fog with the same swirling motion.

But that's where the similarities end.

Where the hitchhiker looks essentially like a college student who's been bleached by the sun, solid and present when she comes out of the fog, the Gray Lady is ethereal, seemingly made of the fog itself. Her hair and dress are layered in varying shades of blue and gray, one moment the pale silky shade of the edge of the Floridian sky, the next the ragged, gunmetal velvet of the windswept bay.

Sam knows at once that this is no spirit. The Gray Lady is older than that, and more powerful -- something _deeper_ than just the remains of someone who can't quite move on after death. She's the spirit of the bay itself, perhaps even the whole Gulf, given human form. And she's outstandingly beautiful.

"Holy shit," Joni murmurs. She swipes a hand over her head, fingers tangling in her hair. "Holy shit."

Barry smiles, and Sam realizes it's the first time he's seen the man not force the expression. "Mateys," he says. "That's my Lady."

*

The Gray Lady is too far from the boat to talk to easily, and Barry refuses to sail them any closer. Joni and Sam stand side by side at the bow of the boat, both straining over the edge, leaning out and upward.

"What do we do?" Joni asks. "How do we talk to her?"

"I don't know," Sam says.

"But we have to see if she knows where your brother --"

"I _don't know_ ," Sam says again. "I've only _fought_ spirits. I never learned to _talk_ to them."

Joni stares at him wide-eyed, and Sam remembers that he wasn't going to tell her about the hunting stuff. It's hard to remember to hide it when it's floating ten feet in front of you and thirty feet up.

"I have an idea," Joni says.

"Yeah?" Sam feels hope bubble up in his chest. "Some kind of ritual? Or a hoodoo offering?"

Joni rolls her eyes. "I'm from Trinidad, Sam. Not a historical romance novel." She puts her hands up to her mouth and tilts back her head. "Hey! Lady! Over here!" Then she waves her arms in the air, jumping up and down.

Well. Sam supposes that's worth a shot. He starts waving and jumping and yelling, too.

The Gray Lady doesn't turn. She doesn't float or flicker closer -- or call up a storm to thrash Barry's little sailboat. She tips her head and raises one arm like it's bobbing on the waves and points down into the water.

Sam can hardly breathe. "My -- my brother?" he asks, staring out at the spot the Gray Lady's indicating. He looks up and finds himself looking right into the Gray Lady's eyes.

The world shifts and then vanishes.

*

The hitchhiker's gaze called up every terrible, lonely, painful thought lurking around in the back of Sam's head. The Gray Lady's calls to the memories, both good and bad. Sam sees Dean as he's always known him, his stupid, stubborn, infuriating, ridiculous, generous giant of a brother, always hanging around, right over Sam's shoulder, lifting Sam up and holding him steady against all the things in the world that try to knock him down. There's Dean threatening Sam's bullies, stealing for Sam and lying to Sam and working his ass off for little pay and less respect for Sam. Dean cooking and Dean drinking and Dean dragging him to parties just to get him to loosen up. He sees these things and his chest aches, somehow deeper than it had on the top of the bridge. It's as though Sam's being continuously hollowed out, sucked dry of everything he's ever felt to make room for the burning ache growing in his heart.

 _Dean_.

And then the memories shift ever so slightly, and suddenly all of those stupid, stubborn, infuriating, ridiculous, and generous things Dean's done or said or been in Sam's life take on a new shape. Dean shrinks, no longer looming and overwhelming. He's Sam's size now, even slightly smaller, standing against giants of his own. He's no longer Sam's big brother -- just his older one.

For the first time in Sam's life, he sees his brother as a _person_.

Hands wrap around Sam's arms and the world snaps back into focus sharply enough to send him reeling. He's staring upward, but all he can see now is the fog. The Gray Lady's vanished. He tries to lurch forward, chase after her, but Joni and Barry are holding him up and back, and he's having trouble getting his legs working properly.

"Hang on there, matey," Barry says. "You've gone and lost your sea-legs on us."

"Did you see? Where she pointed?" Sam lunges forward again, even while Joni and Barry drag him back, lowering him to the deck by the front of the pilothouse. "That's Dean, that's where --"

A splash rings out in the otherwise still night. Sam breaks free of Barry and Joni's grip and stumbles to the railing at the bow. The place the Gray Lady had indicated in the water is rippling wildly. "Dean!"

There's another splash, this one much closer, and Sam realizes that there's only one set of hands trying to pull him back, now. He looks back at Barry, who nods to the water.

Joni's jumped in, one of Barry's life preservers in hand. Sam remembers with a start that she's on the college's search and rescue team, that she's actually _trained_ for this. In moments, she's reached the spot the Gray Lady indicated. She drops under once, vanishing into the dark, then comes up for air before dropping again and coming back up with someone in her grip. She grabs on to the life preserver and nods back to the boat, and Barry lets go of Sam's arm to start towing her in. Sam crawls forward, his legs still not wanting to take his weight, and peers out across the water, trying to make out the features of the man slumped in her grip. He has to be sure.

It's Dean. She's found Dean. If Sam weren't already down, he'd drop then and there. He barely manages to pull together enough to help Barry haul Joni and Dean onto the boat. Joni looks up, pushing her hair out of her eyes, and grins at Sam.

"He's breathing," she says, and as she lays one hand on the center of Dean's chest, he twitches. "I don't know how, but he's breathing. I think he'll be okay."

Sam's on his knees on Dean's other side, breathing just as hard as Joni after her swim. "I'm taller than him," he says. "I never noticed before. I never --"

Dean groans faintly, his eyes cracking open, and Sam leans in close to hear what he's saying.

"Fuck you." Dean squints at Sam. "Are not."

*

Barry's first aid kit has several rescue blankets, foil coated sheets that act both as insulators and as reflectors. Joni drapes two of them over Dean where he's huddled at the stern of the boat, then pulls a third over her own shoulders. After a moment, she throws a fourth at Sam. He lets it lie where it falls on the deck. Joni gives him a hard look, then goes to join Barry at the wheel, giving Sam and Dean their space.

Dean hasn't said a word since they started back towards the marina. Sam slouches next to him, pressing his shoulders and knees against Dean's.

"How long?" Dean finally croaks.

"Almost a day."

"Dad?"

Sam shakes his head.

"You should have told him."

Sam shakes his head again. He's torn between wanting to stare at Dean and wanting to look anywhere but. "What was it like on your end?"

"Damp. Gray." Dean shrugs. "Nothing special."

"Dean --" Sam starts, but he doesn't know what to say next. It's strange -- he's never had trouble talking to his brother before.

"You know we'd never have had that, right?" Dean nods to Barry and Joni, chatting away at the wheel.

"What?"

"Your white pickets and fancy colleges and boats and things. That wouldn't be us. Even if Dad never started hunting." Dean sighs heavily, leaning more of his weight on the bench behind them. "Dad wasn't some professor or accountant or dentist. You wouldn't have gotten wine and caviar."

Sam bites his lip, a million and a half retorts springing to mind in an instant, none of them well-formed enough to make it out of his mouth. "I got into Stanford," he blurts instead. "Full scholarship. Starting in August."

"I know." Sam can't help but stare at Dean now. Dean flashes him a tired smirk. "Fucking spirit pretty much zapped it into my head."

Sam was afraid of that.

Dean burrows down a little into his blankets. Bay water still drips off the ends of his hair. "You're not a tool, Sam."

Sam swallows and can't bring himself to say anything in return.

*

Joni drops them off back at their house. It takes Sam an eternity to unfold himself from her backseat, and he nearly falls out the door. Part of it is that she drives a two-door. Most of it is that Sam's completely exhausted.

"I'm glad you guys are okay," she says. "But if I see you on campus again I'm calling security."

Dean flicks her off. Sam grabs the back of his shirt and drags him back towards the house.

They both sleep through most of the next day. No one calls or comes looking -- Dean's not official enough at his job for anyone to try and track him down, and Dad is still off doing whatever it is he's been doing since they arrived. They get up an hour or so before nightfall, and Sam offers to go grab them dinner. Dean barely manages to nod in return. He's closed down since they got back to dry land, and though Sam can tell he's making a decision about something, he can't quite work out what it is.

They put in a day at the library, sifting through missing persons reports from the sixties and seventies until they find the hitchhiker. Dean puts the call in to Dad, and Sam would swear they're the first words he's spoken all day.

As far as Sam knows, the rescue crews are still looking for Dean's body. He's not sure how Dean will react to Sam asking him to come forward and help him call the search off.

Dean wanders off just before they're about to leave, then won't tell Sam what he's been doing when he comes back. Sam watches him carefully the rest of the night, but he can't figure out what's going on in his brother's thick head.

*

Dean nudges Sam awake the following morning at an hour he's pretty sure Dean usually thinks should be illegal. He bundles Sam into the Impala without saying a word, and Sam's too bleary eyed to do much about it. They head north, and Sam figures they're going to meet Dad until Dean pulls into the parking lot of the Pinellas County School Board. Sam frowns and twists to stare at Dean.

"It's too late to register."

"I know. We're probably leaving in a couple of days, anyway."

"Then why --"

"Stanford just wants you to have a diploma, right?" Dean nods at the building. "Take the test. We both know you'll pass."

Sam swallows and turns back to stare at the building. "I -- I don't know. They might not --"

"Worth a shot though, isn't it?"

Sam turns again, staring back at Dean. "You come, too."

Dean shakes his head. "It's not for me, Sammy."

"Bullshit." Sam doesn't know why, but he's suddenly desperate to get Dean to agree. "Come take the test with me."

"What am I, your security blanket?"

"Sure." Sam tugs on Dean's arm. "Come on, Dean. You going to let your taller brother show you up?"

Dean scowls. "Shut up." He opens his door and starts climbing out. "I'm going to kick your ass all over this test."

Sam smiles as Dean's grumbling starts to fill in the hole in his chest.

It's not perfect. He'll be leaving in a few months, and there's no way Dad will take it so well. Hell, there's no way _Dean's_ taking it so well. The summer might just be the hardest of Sam's life.

But he can do it. He knows he can, now.

As long as Dean's out there doing his thing, Sam knows he can do anything at all.

  
 _And it's just a box of rain, I don't know who put it there,  
Believe it if you need it, or leave it if you dare.  
But it's just a box of rain, or a ribbon for your hair.  
Such a long long time to be gone and a short time to be there_  
\-- "Box of Rain", The Grateful Dead

**Author's Note:**

> I can't seem to stop myself from blathering at the ends of these.
> 
> This one takes place in Saint Petersburg, Florida, where I went to college. Unlike in "John of the Cabin", this is a location that I know quite well, and one I was actually _in_ when the story takes place. There's a lot less location fudging going on in this one, though structurally, it manages to be a lot more vague.
> 
> Anyway. Saint Petersburg is, long time readers of my work might have noticed, one of my favorite settings for fanfiction. I've used it twice before that I can recall off the top of my head, in "Whistling in the Dark" under this name, and in "Roads Less Traveled" as Casix Thistlebane. My memories of Florida are of that particularly nostalgic sort that comes from having spent a lot of formative time in a place, and I find it very interesting to look back on those memories from my current perspective and watch them shift and alter with my greater awareness of the world in general.
> 
> Plus, there's nothing not fun about having characters drive over that bridge and see [the Don](http://virtual-explorations.org/images/doncesarhotel.jpg) for the first time. It's a hell of a thing.
> 
> If I'd planned to spend more time here in this fic, I would have had to have included things like Passa Grille and Fort Desoto, Baywalk and Tropicana Field and the Salvidor Dali Museum and the Pier. And the Sunshine Resort! I even cut out the animated dolphin decoration that greets visitors from the water treatment plant right next to the college, and I spent hours one day at work giving myself a faux-driving tour of the town on Google maps to make sure it really looks the way I remember it. . . .
> 
> Anyway. Most of the location-based details in this fic are as true as they can be when written by a nostalgic former pot-head. The blonde hitchhiker really is regularly spotted on the Sunshine Skyway Bridge, and she really is said to predate the Summit Venture disaster. There are stories of a woman in gray below the bridge, though this one isn't as popular. There are actually those who call that stretch of water (from the bridge to the first bowie out in the Gulf of Mexico) the "Dead Zone" of the "Tampa Triangle", because of the large number of marine accidents, disasters, and disappearances attributed to it.
> 
> There was a rumor that Maximo Park, across the creek from my school, was cursed by the Seminoles, but I'm pretty sure that was just a load of crap. We did get to watch a car fire in the park once, though.


End file.
